It’s not about fighting

This is a a post where I’m hoping you’ll comment, because I want to hear from you. It’s about marketing tough information, and I’d love your thoughts.

Recently I met someone at a social function who asked what I did for a living. I’m one of those people that can spin this a variety of ways, given my spastic scope of work. On any given day I can truthfully call myself a writer, a CEO, a media pundit, a speaker, an entrepreneur, a social change activist, an author, a self-defense instructor. Many of us fall into this “jack of all trades” camp, and sometimes it can give us an identity crisis…and possibly even cloak our true value.

If you are an entrepreneur, you might also find the same thing about your work. At Girls Fight Back, we have carved a solid reputation on teaching women to defend themselves. But does that mean at cocktail parties I have to tell people I teach others to fight for a living? Or is it bigger than that? Maybe I’m too deep into this company, but I think we offer more than instructions for an effective elbow strike. It’s not about the fighting…it’s about teaching women to lead bad-ass lives.

Living without fear can only happen once someone knows they don’t have to rely on others to come to their rescue. At the end of the day, there is tremendous power in knowing you don’t have to wait for your daddy or boyfriend or brother to save you…because YOU can save YOURSELF. All of a sudden, those big opportunities like taking a big job in a new city or moving halfway across the world don’t seem so terrifying anymore. I believe this has been a critical, yet missing piece, of the women’s empowerment movement. After all, when you ask most women circumstances when they feel most afraid, it tends to be in everyday situations like walking in parking lots, taking a shower while home alone and other isolated circumstances where others aren’t around.

Is it the situations we fear, or the simple fact that we don’t believe we can handle these situations on our own?

The women’s self-defense industry is in dire need of a makeover, and people’s initial impressions on this line of work are not typically accurate or celebrated. When I tell people what I do for a living, questions start about martial arts (and I’m not a martial artist, just a street fighter) and horrific stories of raped and murdered loved ones are shared. I don’t mind discussing either topic, but here’s a trend: I tell people I teach self-defense. They connect that to Bruce Lee movies. Then they want to share stories about people who have been victimized. Are you seeing the pattern? People jump from Hollywood to real-life horror story, and usually a conversation circles around in this way for quite some time. Where is the girl power? Where are the options? Where is the empowerment? Where is the happy ending? Nowhere.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to change this conversation.

I’m excited to be working with a stellar graphic and communications company to help give Girls Fight Back a facelift, and get more honest with ourselves and the public about what offer. I like to believe we provide the chance to reclaim one’s feeling of safety and security in the world, so females never make choices stemming from fear. If women weren’t fundamentally scared of living alone, sleeping alone, taking risks or even trusting themselves…imagine the progress!

So what I’d like to know from you is this…how can we better market these messages of women’s empowerment? How can we make teaching this kind of life-saving material more like swimming lessons? If you think about it, kids are enrolled in swimming lessons to prevent death by drowning – scary outcome, right? But learning the content is fun, and the kids score awesome floaties and swim trunks! How can we teach self-defense with that same upbeat energy, and help people avoid such unwanted outcomes as rape, assault or murder?

There is too much at stake, to put off this conversation any longer. For the sake of women and girls everywhere…it’s time to innovate.

I had the same problem for years. Also it seems self defense instructors are a dime a dozen. I am martial arts trained so I do get the Lucy Liu comments. What has worked well and created a bit of a paradigm shift is switching the focus from defensive to offensive. Crime avoidance or crime prevention terms are much better received that self defense – at least in my circle.

Teaching RAD, I have the same “Bruce Lee” expereince atleast once a week.

I will ponder this more in depth, however what first comes to mind is the realization of vulnerability. When we talk about self defense, we bring to light the fearsome issues we face as women. However most of the time, we would prefer to ignore the fact that women live with fear, or worse yet, this is common place. So to talk about defending ourselves and being strong, we would have to admit there is a problem.

I like your point about the swimming lessons. Can we make self defense just as normal as getting health insurance? Hmm…..

On the flip side, as a woman who got involved in martial arts to do martial arts, typically when the topic comes up the assumption is made that I do it for self defense. My self defense skills have improved directly from some of the physical techniques I have learned over the years, and indirectly from rubbing shoulders with women who teach and have passion about self-defense.

Some parents enroll their kids in swimming lessons to prevent drowning (moving away from what they don’t want) while others encourage their kids to learn to swim for the joy of it (moving toward what they want). This may be an idea to toy with, and it fits into the concepts surround fear based marketing vs empowerment based marketing. The fear based approach is very manipulative, and some people will resist for that reason alone (that’s me).

Not long ago I was reading an HR blog and a woman was being picked on by her boss – stupid, juvenile stuff. The thing that jumped out at me (besides that the boss was a jerk) was that the woman could get the tools she needed to deal with him by going to a good, holistic self-defense class. Posture, confidence, and boundary setting would either shut him up or give her the security to deal with it. The challenge is to get her into a class because of all the stereotypes that you talk about.

Hi Erin, I agree – great to have the space to explore this. Myself and Elaine who set up Freedom Personal Safety are the only 2 RAD instructors in the UK, so we don’t have the ‘RAD brand’ to help us (does it help you – would be interested to hear?). We stay away from ‘self defence’ as it has connotations of martial arts and many women think they need to be fit, agile and young to take part.
I tend to say to people ‘I teach women and children how to keep themselves safe and stop anyone hurting them’ – which is a bit of a mouthful but hasn’t so far scared anyone off! I quickly add that we ‘teach simple but effective physical techniques’ and then they start asking questions.
I must admit to sometimes using stats to emphasise why our work is so important (1 in 4 women will experience rape or sexual assault in her lifetime, 2 children in every UK classroom will experience abuse during their childhood etc.). I do sometimes share my own story too.
I would really like to get better at explaining that our approach is holistic – not just safety tips and a few moves, that it empowers women to take control emotionally and physically and say ‘NO’ when someone tries to hurt them.
Sorry for rambling on, but it is so great to have the space to share views with women with the same goals that I have got a little carried away.
The distance across the pond just got a little smaller.
All the best, Julie

Laurie, I agree the Hollywood parallels can sometimes help. When I started GFB it was in 2001, when things like Buffy, Charlies Angels and Xena Warrior Princess were still pretty hot. Since then I’ve seen more of a shift from the public wanting peace vs fighting. (which any good instructor is surely striving for – but I may have chosen our company name differently had I known this would be the case). Agreed people always want to hear the positive side of things…so the burden is on us to make this education as approachable as possible.

Aimee, indeed we as humans don’t like looking fear in the face…until we absolutely have no choice. I guess this explains why so many survivors seek out this training…they want a new ending. Your point about making this training the “new normal” should be one that all of us are considering.

April, excellent points on moving towards what one does/doesn’t want…understanding what truly drives people is the core of marketing isn’t it? Agreed, self-defense training (or whatever we should be calling it) is incredibly useful in so many life situations!

Julie, I don’t affiliate with the RAD brand, despite being a certified instructor. Like most orgs dedicated to this issue, there seems to be a major central lacking on branding, marketing and unified strategy overall. I have a theory on why, and it has to do with too many people doing this great work on a part-time basis. I think we need to change that. Just as we have full time lawyers and teachers and toll collectors…we should have people earning good wages who instruct others how to save their own life someday. And I’m not talking about full-time cops who teach self-defense once in awhile…those poor people have so much on their plate, it’s ridiculous! Feel free to reach out to us at Girls Fight Back anytime you want to bounce ideas around. I love talking about this stuff. You might also check out NWMAF or AWSDA.

I love that you are tackling this specific topic! I also like switching the tone of the conversation from the defensive to the offensive. Instead of focusing on all of the bad things that could happen to women (although this will possibly be part of the topic for the forseeable future), we might get more success by talking about all the things you could do with the freedom that some self-defense knowledge gives women. I have lived on college campuses for more than a decade and I do not fear living alone, or walking across the campus alone, but at the same time, I have been to your workshops and feel better prepared to handle what might come my way. I try not to live out of fear, but I also realize that some fear is healthy, helps us to avoid outright dangerous situations. I am not sure that this is any help at all, but I know that what you do is so important! I attended a workshop in 2003 at EIU and to this day, I still think about the various skills and ideas I learned during that. But most important, I learned to live my life instead of living in fear. Thank you! And good luck as you navigate through these deep questions! Can’t wait to hear what conclusions you come to.

My book sells but I never expect it to sell a lot. The problem is that what we teach does not have measurable results. Someone could take a Girls Fight Back Seminar and as a result of what they learn, avoid problems but people do not go around thinking, ” ok I didn’t get attacked today that is 100 days of no attack. I am going to attend another seminar.” Also it is not something they want to think about, so they don’t.

If the results from the seminar made the person loose body fat gain muscle ( something they could measure ) they would attend another seminar ‘ ok I lost 5 pounds from working with that new personal trainer, I am going to sign up for another month and tell my friend Lisa about her too ‘

Marketing to the parents who love there daughter more than themselves, would ‘require’ the daughter to attend a self defense class, drive them to the class, pay for it and buy them the book, hoping the daughter would take the time to read it.

For re-framing the conversation of what you do – you allow women to tap into their personal physical abilities to enhance self-respect and well being – for the individual, as well as the community.

The entire community benefits from confident women who can productively engage in conflict. Sometimes people can talk through conflict, when less physical options are not available, you empower women to make good decisions and take action based on their abilities and assessments.

As for measureable results, NCHERM said that the one factor that keeps sexual assault low on campuses is teaching women self-defense. I’m not sure of their data point, though if you are looking for data – that’s one area to sift through, or send an email.

I think part of the dialogue must include teaching our collective boys how to behave towards women. In my experience, women are afraid because of the treatment they have seen/heard/experienced from men. Change has to start at very basic levels with both genders– empowering girls to move through the world with strength and empowering boys to know that their strength is not best shown by being violent or even threatening towards women.

Thanks Erin – really interesting to read the comments posted. We do personal safety full time basis (children allowing!) and once I had learnt the techniques, there was no going back for me – I knew I had to spend my time teaching other women.
Like Danny, we often focus our sessions around body language and how we communicate and this is something majority of women ‘get’ and can use daily.
I love what I do and it is great to be able to discuss these fundamental issues with like-minded folks.

I still come back to denial. How do we market to a group that denies there is a problem? Most women don’t think anything “bad” will happen to them. And when I say bad, I think most women envision horror stories and Hollywood versions of attacks. How do we help women to understand that attacks can start out with a simple wrist grab, or someone verbally crossing boundaries, or coersion?

Sexual assault/violence is a multifaceted problem that calls for a multifaceted solution.

Yes, we definately need full-time dedicated professionals to get out there and teach! You know I do RAD and RAD Instructor Training full time and I never thought about congregating an army of self defense professionals, RAD and non-RAD – that is a powerful thought – thank you. Is it possible?

I woke up this morning thinking about marketing. I was reminded of the gum industry. For decades, gum was packaged in aluminum wrap in stick form. In the late 90’s Wrigley shook things up to reach other market segments by introducing the gum blister pack. Their sales shot through the roof. And it began a new era of gum packaging. The next time you are at the store check out the variety.

Now I am not looking for my sales to double – however I am interested in reaching the market segment of people who don’t think about self defense. What kind of “blister pack’ can we create for self defense education to get people fired up and involved?

And from an industry standpoint, how do we openly innovate? Because there are a variety of self defense brands, can we innovate together? Can we come together, realize we all have the same intention and support and innovate together while staying true to our brands? Or do we create a new brand? For the longest time self defense has been tied to martial arts and law enforcement, why can’t it be tied to a mom who got mad one day, and devoted herself to bringing self defense options to women? Is that enough and will women respond?